News Updates

Wynton Marsalis, with daughter Oni on vocals, and members of the Jazz at Lincoln Center orchestra, recorded a new arrangement of “Jingle Bells” at Spotify Studios in NYC, dressed in their Brooks Brothers best. Now playing on Spotify. View the full video at BrooksBrothers.com
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In the fall of 2016, Wynton Marsalis spoke at an event in Manhattan commemorating the centennial of Albert Murray, the jazz historian, cultural critic and novelist who died in 2013 at age 97. Murray had been a longtime mentor to the trumpeter and composer, ever since he was an 18-year-old Juilliard student.
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Thursday night, in the middle of Nicola Benedetti’s playing a cadenza in a violin concerto with the Philadelphia Orchestra, a man walked through the ensemble to a spot just inches from the violinist and started playing drums.
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Sharon Percy Rockefeller, president and CEO of WETA Washington, D.C., today announced the talent and broadcast plans for “Tony Bennett: The Library of Congress Gershwin Prize for Popular Song,” a PBS music special honoring Tony Bennett’s receipt of the Library of Congress Gershwin Prize for Popular Song. The program will premiere Friday, January 12, 2018 at 9 p.m. ET on PBS stations nationwide (check local listings).
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Supposedly running 50 minutes at its 2015 London premiere, the concerto would seem to be one of the longest pieces of its kind. Now that it’s arriving for Philadelphia Orchestra concerts Thursday through Saturday at the Kimmel Center, the piece has a more Brahmsian length of 40 minutes. Rest assured, though, this concerto doesn’t sound like Brahms.
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“In a few minutes, we are going to talk about improvisation. You are about to see it,” Harvard President Drew Faust told the crowd at Sanders Theatre on Monday evening as jazz great Wynton Marsalis took up his trumpet.
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Trumpeter and composer Wynton L. Marsalis improvised some blues with the Harvard Jazz Band before reflecting on the value of education for both the arts and society with University President Drew G. Faust in a crowded Sanders Theatre Monday night.
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As one of the world’s most acclaimed young violinists, Nicola Benedetti has earned a stellar reputation for her ability to perform some of the most challenging works in classical music with flawless technical mastery and deep emotional conviction.
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Wynton Marsalis returns to campus Oct. 30 for an evening celebrating the video release of “Music as Metaphor,” the lecture and performance that launched his Harvard lecture series in 2011. The event, “A Conversation with Wynton Marsalis and Drew Faust,” will explore the importance of the arts and cultural literacy in education, jazz, and society.
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